Sheldon Jackson was born in Minaville, New York in 1834. He
graduated from Union College in 1855, and from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1858.
He became an ordained Presbyterian minister after leaving Princeton, and soon began
his extensive missionary career. His missionary work started in western Wisconsin and
southern Minnesota; then from 1869 to 1882, his work led him to travel on to Nebraska,
Iowa, and much of the Rockies. Jackson's enthusiasm and energy was unstoppable as
he pursued his mission throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wymoning, and
Montana. It is estimated that during the course of his life, he may have travelled close
to a million miles as he established over a hundred missions and churches.

In 1877, Alaska became his passion. He founded
numerous schools and training centers that served native Alaskans. Jackson became very
committed to the spiritual, educational, and economic well-being of the people of
Alaska. He made numerous trips into Siberia and imported nearly 1300 reindeer to
bolster the livelihoods of Alaskan Eskimos. He travelled extensively
throughout Alaska, and collected representative items as he journeyed. He worried
that native cultures and their arts and ways of life would vanish, with no records of
their past. His collections became the foundation for a museum of natural history and
ethnology in Sitka. Today the Sheldon Jackson Museum, located at Sheldon Jackson
College in Sitka, houses many of Jackson's pieces, as well as other examples of
Tlingit, Eskimo, and Aleut culture.

Jackson saw the necessity of using political
means to further his goals of betterment for the Alaskan people. He became a close
friend of President Benjamin Harrison. He worked toward
the passage of the Organic Act of 1884, which ensured that Alaska would begin to
set up a judicial system, including a court, a judge, a marshall, a district attorney,
and commissioners appointed by the President of the U.S. But more importantly to
Jackson, the Act provided Federal aid for education for Alaska. As a result, Sheldon
Jackson became the First General Agent of Education in Alaska. Sheldon Jackson's energy
and devotion to the educational and spiritual growth of native Alaskans continued unabated
until his death in 1909.